Behind the Curtain :

Football in Eastern
Europe
 By
Jonathan Wilson
Orion Publishing Co
 From the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo, where turning up for
training involved dodging snipers' bullets, to the crumbling
splendour of Budapest's Bozsik Stadium, where the likes of Puskas
and Kocsis masterminded the fall of England, the landscape of
Eastern Europe has changed immeasurably since the fall of
communism. Jonathan Wilson has travelled extensively behind the
old Iron Curtain, viewing life beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall
through the lens of football.

Where once the state-controlled teams of the Eastern bloc passed

their way with crisp efficiency - a sort of communist version of total
football - to considerable success on the European and international
stages, today the beautiful game in the East has been opened up to
the free market, and throughout the region a sense of chaos
pervades. The threat of totalitarian interference no longer remains;
but in its place mafia control is generally accompanied with a
crippling lack of funds.

In BEHIND THE CURTAIN Jonathan Wilson goes in search of the

spirit of Hungary's 'Golden Squad' of the early fifties, charts the
disintegration of the footballing superpower that was the former
Yugoslavia, follows a sorry tale of corruption, mismanagement and
Armenian cognac through the Caucasuses, reopens the case of
Russia's greatest footballer, Eduard Streltsov, and talks to Jan
Tomaszewski about an autumn night at Wembley in 1973...

Orion Publishing Co

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